


the end

by myblackeyedboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Monster of the Week, Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27366979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myblackeyedboy/pseuds/myblackeyedboy
Summary: The boys lose themselves in a hunt to escape the fallout and consequences from their fight against Chuck.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	the end

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't seen Season 15 yet (it hasn't yet got an air date in my country) so this is based solely on Season 14 and what I've seen in the trailer.

Sam and Dean stood facing the burning pyre. Neither spoke, just stared into the flames until they burnt down to embers. 

Neither really knew what to say. 

*  
With the bunker gone, they end up at Bobby's for lack of any place better to go. 

No one had been there since Bobby died. There's a thick layer of dust over everything and a couple of empty bottles of beer balanced on the open books which were scattered on the tables. 

The phones were still lined up and labelled, but they don't ring. Sam and Dean guess there aren't many people who know these numbers anymore. 

They clear the debris slowly. 

They still don't talk. 

*

Dean spends his days in the salvage yard, tinkering with the Impala and lugging spare parts from various cars dotted around the place. He has vague notions of rebuilding cars, but his heart isn't in it. He avoids going inside if he can manage it. Too many ghosts. He sees Bobby slumped at his desk, pouring himself a drink whilst he reads some old book. He sees Jo, Ellen and Cas in the kitchen, drinking shots. He sees Crowley in Bobby’s study. 

Sam by comparison, stays indoors. He spends hours upon hours buried in books, researching; leafing through the books. What he's looking for, he doesn't really know. A way to reverse the ritual, to reset the clock? A way to bring back the dead, and those they’ve lost? Possibly the first. Definitely the second. He doesn't have much luck. 

They migrate back together when it gets dark; usually drinking beers on the porch. They don't talk about what happened. 

They don't talk. 

*

A phone rings. 

Sam is slow to react; so engrossed in his reading that it takes a while for the sound to puncture through. He answers it on the ninth ring. 

The caller on the other end hadn't known who else to call. He'd tried all his other contacts, every hunter he knew, so this was a hail Mary and he was so relieved that someone had answered. Anyone really. He was punching way above his pay grade with this one. He had no idea what he was hunting, all he knew was that people were disappearing and there was no one else to help. 

Sam sighed and told the caller who he was. 

Silence filled the line. The Winchester boys' legacy is wide and far reaching and their recent escapades have cast an exceptionally long shadow. 

“I need your help,” the Caller says. 

Sam sighs and goes to find Dean. 

*

They argue. Sam says they can’t hide away forever. Dean says they never really help anyone, they just get people killed. Sam walks out of the room. He doesn’t necessarily disagree. 

It takes a couple of days to resolve. It’s the longest they’ve spoken to each other about anything real in awhile. Dean finally agrees to the Hunt, but only after Sam says he’ll go alone. Dean never did shake his Dad’s order to look after Sammy. 

Sam calls the Hunter from the road to confirm they’re on their way, but the call goes to voicemail. Sam hopes it’s because he’s sleeping and not because whatever he was hunting has killed him. 

They still don’t talk. 

*

Dean puts the Impala in park outside the motel. 

The motel looked run down and empty, just like the rest of the town. The drive through hadn’t taken long. The main street had a few shops, a diner and what was possibly a bar but the majority were boarded up and closed down. The streets off from the main street, from what they could see, were mostly residential but even they’d had a run down feel to them. 

“Tell me again what the guy said,” Dean asked Sam as they got out of the Impala. 

“Not much,” Sam replied “He mainly talked about how this wasn’t his usual gig. I got his voicemail again, when we came into town.”

Dean grunted and headed for the motel’s reception. 

The motel only had one occupant. Dean started to feed the guy at the front desk some bullshit about meeting up with an old friend and not hearing from him in a few days, but the clerk waved him off and headed to the back room, throwing a “key’s on the counter” over his shoulder as he went. Dean shrugged, leaned through the glass partition and picked up the key. 

*

The Hunter’s room didn’t throw up any clues. 

Sam found an old laptop and set to work trying to crack the password, whilst Dean surveyed the walls. There were a couple of newspaper clippings and missing person ads taped up, but nothing to suggest what the guy had actually been hunting. 

Dean opened the closet doors. “Clothes are still here,” Dean commented. 

Sam grunted in response. 

Dean wandered out of the room, and into their double next door. He set about checking his phone, even though there’s no one to message him, and dumping their bags on the beds. Once he’s done, he saunters back next door where Sam is still working on the Hunter’s laptop. 

“I’m gonna head into town, get something to eat”. 

Sam nods vaguely in acknowledgement. 

Expecting no further response, Dean leaves the room and heads down to the Impala. The guy at the front desk from earlier is nowhere to be seen. Probably watching TV in the back, Dean assumed. He got into the Impala and drove into town.

The town reminded Dean of the hundreds he’d been in over the years. They’d all begun to look the same after a while. Dean half smiled as the memory of him and Castiel working a case in - 

No. He cut the thought off and focused on the road. 

*

The town didn’t have many restaurant options, so Dean got a couple of burgers from the diner, and circled back to the motel. He drove down a few of the more residential streets to kill time. The silence between him and Sam had grown steadily bigger these last few weeks and it weighed on Dean that he had caused it. He took a deep breath, he knew he needed to fix this, but too much had happened and he was beginning to think they’d lost too much to bounce back from this. He missed - no. He cut himself off again. 

His phone interrupted his spiraling thoughts. 

“I got into the guy’s laptop and get this, I think he was here for a haunting,” Sam said when Dean picked up.

“A ghost?” Dean said, “Didn’t he say it was above his pay grade? A ghost is pretty small fry”. 

“Depends on the hunter… ” Sam replied. 

There was a long pause. Dean didn’t really know how to respond to that. He guessed he and Sam were more well versed on the supernatural than your run of the mill hunter, but still a ghost? 

*

Dean didn't really sleep, so much as lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. From what little light he could see from the street lamps outside, he didn't think Sam slept all that much either. 

*

The morning light brought fog and drizzle. There was no one in reception again, as the Winchesters walked past on their way into town. 

The streets also seemed deserted. They stopped in the first open place they could see; the same diner Dean had visited last night. A bell rang over the door and a voice called out from the kitchen that they'd be right with them. 

Dean sat himself at a stool by the counter, in front of an empty mug and perused the menu, whilst Sam made a slow circuit of the room. The diner wasn't much, a couple of worn booths and a counter. A waitress appeared from behind a door, calling "Coffee pot's on the counter, help yourselves. Can I get you anything to eat?"

"Just the coffees," replied Dean as Sam completed his circuit and stood next to him at the counter. The pot was indeed on the counter, steam faintly raising from it. Dean poured them each a mug. "We're actually looking for a friend of ours, we were supposed to meet him at the motel outside of town but they haven't seen him in a couple of days." 

“It’s a quiet town, but folks are real friendly here." 

Sam nodded and picked up his mug. It had a crack in it. 

"You want anything else, you just give me a holler. I'm right back there," she said as she moved back through the door presumably leading to the kitchen.

Dean shrugged. "Sleepy town" he murmured, taking a sip of his coffee.

*

The Waitress didn’t reappear, and with no one in the diner for them to question, the boys tried the remaining few shops, but their question threw up similar answers to the waitress. The bar was still closed, so they agreed to check back later and slowly walked back to the motel. 

"Where is everyone?" 

"Huh?" replied Dean. 

"Dean, we've seen a handful of people since we got here. It's like a ghost town." 

Dean couldn't say he'd particularly noticed. He'd just assumed the town was one of those dried up places you heard about, vacated for bigger cities and hopes of a better life. 

“Lets head back to the motel. Maybe you can find something about missing persons online. If we track the ghost angle, maybe it’ll lead us to the Hunter.”

Sam didn’t have a better idea, so they headed back to the motel. 

*

Dean was lying on the bed, half watching Sam hunched over the laptop, and half watching the weather report on the TV. Cloudy with a chance of rain, he noted. 

“Huh,” said Sam, breaking Dean out of his drifting thoughts. “So, get this, there's been no missing persons reported in the last few months, but there’s also been no house sales, no births, no deaths. It’s like something happened a few months ago and people here just vanished. Hey remember that town in Oregon? All those people went nuts and then just vanished?”

“Anything sign of people going nuts before they vanished?” 

Sam shook his head. “No. It’s like something happened on November Nineteenth and suddenly the whole town no longer exists on paper.” 

“Something like … we nuked Chuck?”

Sam raised his head. Dean didn’t think he’d connected the dates. 

“That was in Lebanon. You really think binding Chuck could cause a town hundreds of miles away to just ... what, disappear?”

Dean shrugged. They’d bound God, who knew what the consequences of that were … 

*

November Nineteenth, Lebanon. 

They were back in the cemetery outside Lebanon. The Winchesters stood opposite Chuck. Dean pointed the gun at Chuck. Back in the same positions they’d been before. 

"We've been down this road before boys, anything that happens to me when you pull that trigger will bounce back on you too. There's no more comebacks this time either, I know you're heading for the Empty." 

Sam raised his arm and also wrapped his hand around the gun, finger resting over Dean’s on the trigger. “We know.” 

Chuck raised his eyebrow, appearing intrigued with this new play. “So you both go out with one bullet? I couldn’t have written it better myself.”

A sudden crack disturbed the silence and the air in front of the Winchester’s rippled. A tear appeared, almost like that which brought them through to the other world. Jack stepped out, a slight glow around him and he saved his hand vaguely behind him, causing the tear to close. 

“Hi,” he said. 

“Well this is unexpected,” said Chuck. 

“Jack?” 

“Hi guys,” Jack said. “We did it.” 

Dean’s arm waivered. They’d done it? “Jack, we discussed this, the ritual wasn’t worth it.” 

“Cas disagreed,” Jack said with a slight tremble in his voice.

The Winchester’s looked at one another, Dean’s furrowed brows to Sam’s wide eyes. Cas disagreed? That meant … 

Chuck laughed. “The ritual? So you convinced an Angel, a Demon and a bunch of monsters to sacrifice themselves in order to bind me? To stop me? You’d have more luck with a bullet.”

"There's always another way," Jack said, raising his arm. 

Light shot from Jack towards Chuck. A brief look of shock crossed his features before he vanished with a gasp. 

“That was … anticlimactic.” Jack said, turning to the Winchesters. 

Dean bowed his head, as Jack tentatively approached. "Cas. Is he...?" He trailed off, unable to finish the question.

Jack nodded and let out a sound between a gasp and a moan. "He said, he couldn’t let you guys go out like that. That he was heading to the Empty anyway, but if he sacrificed his grace, he’d be human and maybe the Empty wouldn’t want a human.” 

The Winchester didn't respond. 

"I can fix it," Jack said. "I can give him back his grace, like before, with those people … in the church," and with that he vanished, leaving the Winchesters alone. 

* 

Dean awoke slowly, blinking away sleep. He hadn’t even noticed he’d drifted off and for a second he thought he'd just had a bizarrely realistic nightmare, until he remembered where he was. 

“Come on sleeping beauty, we’ve got stuff to do.” said Sam, noticing that Dean was awake again. 

“Why’d he do it?” Dean muttered. 

"He knew what he was doing," Sam said, no question as to what Dean was talking about. 

"I know, Sammy. I just think it should have been us. We’ve bent the rules before and survived. Maybe this would have worked too and now Cas is who knows where. Jack obviously can’t find him.” Dean sighed, he doubted the guilt and ache of loss would ever leave. "Cas sacrificed his grace for us. His wings. Y'know, I thought that might make him human again? Like Jack'd find him somewhere in a hospital, or at the side of a road. Bitching about needing a drink or being hungry.” 

“Jack’s only been gone a few months,” replied Sam. 

Dean thought about what they said on TV about kidnap victims, about how the first 24 hours are crucial and how you’re less likely to find them alive with every passing hour after that. Each passing day of Cas’ absence felt a hell of a lot like that. 

*

From lack of any better leads, they end up back at the diner from this morning. The Waitress is nowhere to be seen, but the coffee mugs are stationed in front of each seat and the pot on the counter is still warm.

“Maybe, we should split up. Go door to door, see if anyone’s seen anything weird.” 

Dean shrugged, he didn’t exactly have any better ideas. Not like they’d walked into an obvious cold spot, or heard someone screaming about seeing something weird. 

*

Four hours later, with the setting sun at his back, Dean made his way back to the diner. He’d come up with exactly squat. Most of the main street was boarded up, and the few people Dean had enquired with didn’t seem to buy into his explanation of checking up on a missing person whose photo he couldn’t show them or why November 19th was of any importance. 

The Waitress from this morning greeted Dean with a friendly smile and wave as he entered the diner. Again, there were no other patrons.

“Hey Honey, pull up a stool, there’s a fresh pot of coffee here for you,” She said, as Dean moved to sit on the stool in front of her.

Dean shook his head. “Thanks. It’s quiet here, you must notice when new faces pass through?” 

The Waitress gave Dean a sad smile. “The last couple months have been especially hard. It’s like a ghost town now.”

Dean tilted his head in acknowledgement. Sam had said the same thing. 

“Hey, you remember anything happening on November 19th?” Dean asked. 

The Waitress smiled. “We’ve had some real fine weather lately.”

“No sudden disappearances or strange people?” 

“It’s like a ghost town now; the last couple months have been especially hard,” she said, with a half shrug. 

The bell above the diner’s door rang distracting Dean from his questions. He noted the shake of Sam’s head when he saw Dean staring. 

Both boys declined the Waitress’ offer for coffee, but ordered some food to go. The Waitress vanished back behind the door, leaving Sam and Dean by themselves in the empty diner. 

“No one’s seen anything.” Sam said, the second the door closed behind the Waitress, “No activity on the EMF either.” 

Dean nodded. His attention half caught on the window through to the kitchen. There was no noise coming from back there, and he couldn’t see anyone, despite the Waitress just heading through there. 

“.... Dean?” He heard Sam say. 

“What?” Dean responded. The Waitress must have gone down a side corridor. 

“I said, do you wanna call it a day?” 

Dean shrugged. Seemed as good a plan as any. 

There was a dull thud, but neither could see the cause of the sound. Their orders were bagged up and waiting on the far end of the counter. Dean walked down the side of the counter to collect it, he still couldn’t see the Waitress. She must have slipped back behind the kitchen door, so Dean left the cash for their dinner on the counter. 

“Money’s on the counter,” he called as the boys left the diner. 

*

“You notice how no one in this town seems to talk directly to us?” 

“What?” asked Dean

“Think about it, the guy at the motel, the Waitress, everyone we’ve questioned. They’re all given non-answers or talked around the subject. I can’t tell if they’re purposely avoiding the topic.”

Dean thought back. Sam had a point. The guy at the motel hadn’t responded to Dean’s questions about the Hunter and the people he’d questioned in town hadn’t responded at all.

“The Waitress?” 

“Think about it Dean,” Sam responded, “we’ve made small talk with her, but has she ever answered a direct question?” 

Now that Sam mentioned it, he couldn’t with confidence say she had, and what about all those times she’d just vanished. They’d assume she was in the kitchen, hell he’d assumed the motel guy was in the back but he’d never seen them back there. Both could have vanished. 

“What’d you do with the EMF reader when you came in the diner?” 

“It was in my pocket” said Sam, catching on to Dean’s thinking “but it never went off”. 

“I think we need to go have a chat with that Waitress.”

*

Leaving the Impala parked outside, the boys entered the diner. Dean had a shotgun hidden under his jacket, arm kept close to his side to hide it from view. Sam once again had the EMF in his pocket, along with some salt.

“Hey honey,” said the Waitress, from where she stood behind the counter. “Pull up a stool, there’s a fresh pot of coffee here for you.” 

“A guy came here, about a week ago. Have you seen anyone new in town recently?” 

“Can I get you anything to eat?” 

The Waitress was slightly leaning forward, hands braced on the counter. Dean nodded his head towards the salt shaker close to her hand. Sam nodded back and casually knocked it over. Salt spilled out across the counter top, but the Waitress failed to notice, and more importantly didn’t react to the salt at all. In fact the spilt salt appeared to fall straight through her hand. 

“You’ feeling any colder?” Dean muttered towards Sam, eyes still pinned on the Waitress.

“No.” 

“We’ve had some real fine weather lately. Anyway, coffee’s on the counter, help yourselves,” the Waitress said as she made her way into the kitchen.

Dean moved to follow her, but Sam held out an arm to stop him.

“I don’t think she’s a ghost Dean, she didn’t react to the salt and there’s no cold spot” 

“So what is she then?” 

“I have no idea.”

The boys hung around awaiting the return of the Waitress, but after 30 minutes she had failed to appear. “Can’t be a Buruburu, neither of us have ghost sickness. Death omen, maybe?”

“Never heard of more than one appearing. Whatever it is, is affecting the whole town, not just the waitress.”

“Maybe it’s not a ghost?” Sam wondered aloud.

“What’re you thinking?” 

“It’s like a death echo, but the people here aren’t reliving their deaths.” 

“So they’re what, life echoes?” Dean said, sounding unconvinced. 

Sam shrugged, “Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we’ve seen.” 

Dean stood again, and wound his way around the counter. Pushing open the door, he could see the kitchen but not the Waitress. The kitchen was spotless, no signs of food preparation or dirty dishes. Opening the fridge he noted that it was empty, which didn’t explain where their food had been coming from for the last few days. Probably the same place as the neverending coffee supply. 

“I don’t think the kitchen’s been used in a while.” Dean said, reentering the diner. 

“Hey Honey” said the Waitress. 

Sam and Dean shared a look, neither had seen her enter the diner. 

Dean moved his hand and watched as it drifted straight through the Waitress, the image of her distorting slightly as if he’d moved his hand through smoke. “What the hell?” He explained.

“She’s not dead” 

The boys turned, surprised to see a reaper standing in the diner’s entrance. 

“Well she’s obviously not alive,” replied Dean, incredulously. “Where the hell have you guys been hiding anyway.” 

“Billie said -” 

“I don’t care what Billie said. I care that Cas is missing, Jack is who knows where and this town is full of weird smoke people.” 

The reaper sighed. “There’s nothing for you here. These people aren’t monsters in need of hunting or ghosts in need of putting to rest and as for Cas and Jack, that’s above my paygrade.” 

Dean started to move towards the reaper, but they’d already vanished. 

“Now what?” Said Sam.

*

They leave the town. 

Dean pulls over a few miles down the empty highway and rests his head against the steering wheel. Too many ghosts in that town, and like whatever the town’s occupants had been, the ones in his head couldn’t be as easily salted and burned. 

“I miss Cas,” Dean said, eyes fixed on the empty asphalt. 

Sam hums in agreement and says, “I miss Jack.” 

“So where do we go from here?”

"We carry on. Saving people. Hunting things. The family business." 

Dean looks over at Sam. The wound inflicted from the binding of Chuck was deep, it'll leave one hell of a scar. But the Winchester boys know how to handle loss and scars. 

"Yeah Sammy." 

With that, Dean starts the Impala and pulls back onto the highway. They have no plan on where to go, but they don’t need one. Chuck had reset the clock, changed the rules and there were all sorts of monsters out there in need of hunting. Maybe they’d find Cas and Jack along the way. Stranger things had happened. 

They had work to do, so they would do what they did best; saving people. Hunting things.

**Author's Note:**

> I've tagged this as MCD, to be on the safe side although, Cas isn't dead in this fic. Just missing. This is my first time tagging fic, so if anything needs adding please let me know.
> 
> Feel free to say hi on [Tumblr](https://tumblr.com/%5Bmyblackeyedboy%5D) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/myblackeyedboy)


End file.
